How to Know the Wild Flowers: Difference between revisions

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== Introduction ==
== Introduction ==


''How to Know the Wild Flowers: a Guide to the Names, Haunts, and Habits of our Common Wild Flowers'' by Mrs. William Starr Dana (illustrated by Marion Satterlee and Elsie Louise Shaw) was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York, NY in 1893. [https://www.library.upenn.edu/kislak The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts] at the University of Pennsylvania obtained a copy of the 1903 reprint edition as part of the [https://www.library.upenn.edu/detail/collection/chef-fritz-blank-culinary-archive-and-library Fritz Blank Culinary Archive and Library] in 2008.
''How to Know the Wild Flowers: a Guide to the Names, Haunts, and Habits of our Common Wild Flowers'' by Mrs. William Starr Dana (illustrated by Marion Satterlee and Elsie Louise Shaw)(1893) was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York, NY. [https://www.library.upenn.edu/kislak The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts] at the University of Pennsylvania obtained a copy of the 1903 reprint edition as part of the [https://www.library.upenn.edu/detail/collection/chef-fritz-blank-culinary-archive-and-library Fritz Blank Culinary Archive and Library] in 2008. Widely considered the first field guide to flowers issued in America, its publication marked an important moment in the establishment of the genre and the study of natural history in the United States more broadly.<ref name="Met"/>


<ref name="Met"> “How to Know the Wild Flowers: A Guide to the Names, Haunts and Habits of Our Common Wild Flowers.” Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/405911. </ref>
<ref name="Met"> “How to Know the Wild Flowers: A Guide to the Names, Haunts and Habits of Our Common Wild Flowers.” Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/405911. </ref>

Revision as of 01:25, 4 May 2023

Introduction

How to Know the Wild Flowers: a Guide to the Names, Haunts, and Habits of our Common Wild Flowers by Mrs. William Starr Dana (illustrated by Marion Satterlee and Elsie Louise Shaw)(1893) was published by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York, NY. The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania obtained a copy of the 1903 reprint edition as part of the Fritz Blank Culinary Archive and Library in 2008. Widely considered the first field guide to flowers issued in America, its publication marked an important moment in the establishment of the genre and the study of natural history in the United States more broadly.[1]

[1]

Book Cover

Historical Context

Frances Theodora Parsons

After the death of her husband, Frances Theodora Parsons embraced Victorian customs for widows, including the adoption of his name.[2] She also assumed a solitary lifestyle until her friend Marion Satterlee got her to resume taking walks in the countryside. [2] She then rediscovered the love for botany that she developed while spending her childhood summers away from New York City in Newburgh, New York. [2] Together, the women collected the material for this hugely successful book.[2] Parsons later went on to write a column about nature for the New York Tribune (compiled in According to Season (1894)), as well as the successive guide How to Know the Ferns (1899), and a children’s handbook called Plants and Their Children (1896). She gave up naturalist writing when she became very active in the suffrage movement, though she did also publish a memoir entitled Perchance Some Day (1951) just before her death. [2]

19th-Century Women's Botanical Writings

[3]

[4]

Textual Analysis

Paratexts

[5]

Table of Contents

Body Text

Example Page: Wood Anemony

Imagery

Sample Chromolithograph

Material Analysis

Substrate

Protected Chromolithograph

Marginalia

Marginalia

Insertions

[6]

Inserted Funeral Announcement
Pressed Plant

Readership

[7]

June Yale Crouter's Signature

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 “How to Know the Wild Flowers: A Guide to the Names, Haunts and Habits of Our Common Wild Flowers.” Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/405911.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Anderson, Lorraine. Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry about Nature. Vintage Books, 2003.
  3. Raymo, Chet. The Path: A One-Mile Walk through the Universe. Walker & Company, 2003.
  4. Fitzpatrick, John Thomas. “Cultivating and Preserving American Wild Flowers, 1890–1965.” Cornell University, 2006.
  5. Parsons, Frances Theodora. How to Know the Wild Flowers: A Guide to the Name, Haunts, and Habits of Our Common Wild Flowers. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903.
  6. Stauffer, Andrew. Book Traces: Nineteenth-Century Readers and the Future of the Library. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
  7. Report of the Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Meeting of the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf. United States Government Printing Office, 1929.